The smell of money stinks.

No, really. Money smells like shit. Literally, like shit.

Cow shit, chicken shit, and the gasses produced by drilling for oil all smell horrid and are toxic if inhaled for too long. But methane (cow), ammonia (chicken), and hydrogen sulfide (oil drilling) are the smell of money. Big money.

You wouldn’t know it to spend any time in the middle of Nowhere, Texas (aka Cow/Chicken/Oil Country), but there is big money here. This county was recently named one of the top three oil producing counties in the world.

The. WORLD.

Unlike California, you can’t see any of the money here. People aren’t flashy and dress casually out here in the country. Many of the wealthy cattle ranchers and newly prosperous oil land/mineral rights owners still work their ranches. They wear regular blue jeans and drive pickups, sometimes old beat up pickups. There’s not one Ferrari or Porsche here. You might see a few of the new muscle cars, a couple older Mercedes, and a couple (random) Hummers driving around town. But most vehicles are Dodge Rams or Ford F150 trucks.

A chicken house for organic “free-range” chickens… the doors are so they can go out if they want. They don’t want. Your “free-range” chickens don’t give a hoot about ranging.

But you can smell the money wafting through the air from the cow ranches, the chicken houses, and the oil derricks. Since I’ve already shown y’all the cattle ranching, farming, and the oil derricks, this post is about the ammonia, err I mean, chicken houses…

Ready for the chicken house… or a HAZMAT cleaning crew.

This is what was happening behind me as I walked through the chicken house: the hens followed me. It’s a little creepy. They are NOT looking for food as they have all they want. They’re just stalkers.

If only I could impart the smell of a chicken house over the blogosphere. It’s probably good thing I can’t – you’d all leave. (No chickens were harmed in the making of this video, but I can’t say the same for my nasal passages.)

There is ONE rooster in this hen house of HUNDREDS of hens. Yup, he’s one lucky cock. But I guess that depends on your point of view.

UPDATE: Reader Terri pointed this out in the comments, and I neglected to mention it: Eggs do not require a rooster. This rooster got in the hen house by accident. When sexing (checking and then sorting based on their gender) the chicks, the rooster somehow got into the “hen” pile. Apparently this isn’t an uncommon occurrence. The roosters are left with then hens since trying to remove them would upset the whole bunch. The chickens are rather skittish by nature and my friend warned me not to make any sudden moves while inside. He said there’s nothing worse than the whole flock squawking and taking flight – and the dust is horrible.